The present invention relates to electronic price label (EPL) systems, and more specifically to a system and method of applying price changes in an electronic price label system.
Point-of-sale (POS) transaction processing systems typically include a price look-up (PLU) file which contains item identification information and item price information.
EPL systems typically include a plurality of EPLs for merchandise items in a store. EPLs typically display the price of corresponding merchandise items on store shelves and are typically attached to a rail along the leading edge of the shelves. A store may contain thousands of EPLs to display the prices of the merchandise items. The EPLs are coupled to a central server from where information about the EPLs is typically maintained in an EPL data file. Price information displayed by the EPLs is obtained from the PLU data file and stored within an EPL price change record.
Current POS systems are not equipped to perform daily changes in PLU files. Instead, they use additional fields such as xe2x80x9cSALE datexe2x80x9d, xe2x80x9cSALE time beginxe2x80x9d, xe2x80x9cSALE time endxe2x80x9d, and xe2x80x9cSALE informationxe2x80x9d. Since EPL price change records typically come from PLU files, EPL systems are not equipped to perform daily price changes either.
Therefore, it would be desirable to provide a system and method of handling daily price changes in EPL systems.
In accordance with the teachings of the present invention, a system and method of applying daily price changes in electronic price label (EPL) systems is provided.
The system includes an electronic price label associated with the item and a computer. The computer reads a record for the item in a price file, obtains daily price change information for the item from the record, adds the daily price change information to another file different from the price file, and processes the daily price change information in the other file. Processing involves reading the daily price change information from the other file, sending a first message to the electronic price label at the start time including a command to display the new price, and sending a second message to the electronic price label a the end time including a command to display a regular price for the item from the price file.
It is a feature of the present invention that the computer maintains a separate file for daily price change information in order to minimize price look-up file access attempts.
The method of the present invention includes the steps of reading a record for the item in a price file, obtaining daily price change information for the item from the record including a new price and a date and a start time and an end time, adding the daily price change information to another file different from the price file, reading the daily price change information from the other file, and sending a message to an electronic price label associated with the item at the start time including a command to display the new price.
It is accordingly an object of the present invention to provide a system and method of applying daily price changes in electronic price label (EPL) systems.
It is another object of the present invention to provide an EPL system which is capable of handling daily price changes.
It is another object of the present invention to provide an EPL system which uses a separate file for storing daily price changes in order to minimize price look-up file access attempts.